Language Contest on WordPress.com

WordPress developers are opening the door to foreign languages even more by highlighting them in the WordPress Blogs of the Day list with a new “Language Filters” most popular languages featured on WordPress.com list. The WordPress Blogs of the Day (BOTD) is the source of the top blogs on WordPress.com lists found on the front page of WordPress.com and in your Dashboard.

According to the announcement, the most popular languages selected on WordPress.com blogs today are:

English

Español

Italiano

Português

Deutsch

Svenska

Português do Brasil

Français

Ελληνικά

Nederlands

If you do want to blog in another language, in the Administration Panels > Options > General Options, change the language settings to the language of your choice. Currently, there are about 113 different languages to choose from.

If the WordPress Theme you have chosen is designed to accommodate translation (localization), then your blog will be in that language, titles and all. If it is not, then your writing will be in your language, but the titles in the sidebar and a few other places will be in English. For more information on WordPress and languages, see WordPress in Your Language from the WordPress Codex.

And The Winner Is…

There is a new contest on WordPress.com. Currently, you can compete through popularity, changes in activity levels, and tags. Now you can compete with languages.

The top 10 list of languages used on WordPress.com is a form of competition. If you want to see your language move up the charts, get more people blogging in your language.

This is the best kind of competition. By helping others in your language blog on WordPress.com, you give yourself and your fellow linguists a chance to read more written in their language. Create your own language-specific network of bloggers on WordPress.com. You can help each other through the hurtles of WordPress and blogging in general as well as share ideas and link to each other.

Click on the language link on the WordPress Blogs of the Day and you will see Scoble drop out of the top 10 and only see the top blogs in that language. You can now compete for popularity from among the top bloggers in your language.

To help promote other blogs on WordPress.com by language, you can even link to the WordPress Blogs of the Day list showcasing blogs in a specific language. The link looks like this:

http://botd.wordpress.com/?lang=es

This is the link for the Spanish language blogs on WordPress.com. Change the =es to the language code of your choice. Here are some examples:

de – Deutsch

eo – Esperanto

eu – Euskara

nl – Nederlands

nn – Norsk (nynorsk)

sk – Slovencina

pl – Polski

su – Basa Sunda

it – Italiano

da – Dansk

You can include these custom links in your blogroll/bookmarks, sidebar, or wherever you want to promote other blogs on WordPress.com in your language, or any language.

So start sending out smoke signals, beating the drums, yodeling across the mountains. Get your friends, relatives, non-relatives, enemies, and fellow language members blogging. Send them invites from your Administration Panel. Send emails or faxes. Chat them. Ping them. Get them to go to WordPress.com and request an invitation to blog for free. Drive your language to the top of the list!

7 Comments

Boy, you do post at a dazzling rate. I had to scroll way down to find your post about 9rules.

I hadn’t been here before, but I can see why you are so well spoken of; it’s good content.

As for 9rules, I can so relate to the ‘scared’ part. I haven’t posted about my nomination yet and am anxiously awaiting their e-mail to see if it’s actually true. I do hope they include some small ‘jury report’ of sorts, because I really have no idea what made them decide in my favour.

Well, congratulations to you too of course and let’s see if we can make WordPress proud of us non-hosted little bloggers. Cheers!

Congrats to you, too, Napfisk. The issue of why they decide and how they decide is one that puzzles me, too, but I have read that one of the most outstanding reasons is passion. If they see the passion and love for what you do shining through, that’s a good sign. The rest is just typical “good blogging technique” stuff, but I like the idea of passion and love being part of the criteria. On that, you score high!

Search. You can do a site search of the Blogs of the Day blog for your blog or post title. It isn’t a write up, it is your post that bounced up into the top 100. Since it is an ever changing list, it can be in there for a few minutes or a day and then gone. So try a site search on the site or through Google, and congrats! Some never make it into the list.